TERROR IN
LONDON

Summary:In a virtual replay of 9/11, criminals
set off bombs in
London
, killing and injuring people.The
government assumes the perpetrators to be Islamic terrorists, managing
to find the ID cards of people who were otherwise blown to bits.A formerly unknown and secret organization
claims responsibility via a web site.Immediately,
leaders and media begin telling people what to think of this, and who
may have done it.A prominent
Israeli calls for world war.Officials
shout that restrictions on public freedom are necessary to stop the scourge
of terror.On an emotional
high, the head of state rolls out draconian “control orders” (that
were already waiting in the wings) that trim liberties, grant privacy-invasive
powers to police, broaden the definition of terrorism and give the gov’t
carte blanche to make anyone they want “disappear” without
due process.Just like
America
’s PATRIOT Act or Hitler’s Enabling Act, the proposed measures
violate human rights and would have been considered illegal just a short time
before.The public, not suspecting that what
is
“aimed at terrorists” could be aimed at anyone, applauds this further
step toward becoming a police state.Almost
immediately, the police arrest hundreds of suspects in various countries and
generally add to the atmosphere of public fear.The media joins in this by speculating about more attacks.Frightened people start picking on the
nearest Muslims.In the
US
, they put armed soldiers in subways and right-wing pundits warn of attacks
on US soil any day.British
Muslims get blamed for the attacks, the media quickly disseminates the “profile” of
a homegrown terrorist and instills additional fear of all Muslims, even
their own citizens.Attempted
repeat bombings occur on 7/21, which, since they failed, convey the idea
to the public that these were amateurs who can be stopped.The
next logical step might be an event that instills in all citizens the
fear of each other.The
U.S.
already distributes free cigarette packs to Iraqis, which, on the side,
urge,
“inform on your neighbors.”

“The
British daily Financial Times disclosed on Tuesday that the British
defense office has prepared a plan to withdraw a great part of its
forces from
Iraq
.”Is this an incredible
coincidence or could it be that someone didn’t want them to withdraw?If
they were readying to pull out of
Iraq
, well, isn’t that what Muslims want?Why
would they plant bombs in
London
?

“British
police told the Israeli Embassy in
London
minutes before Thursday's explosions that they had received warnings
of possible terror attacks in the city, a senior Israeli official said…Just before the
blasts, Scotland Yard called the security officer at the Israeli Embassy
to say they had received warnings of possible attacks”Yet according to other news, the
British people and law enforcement got no such warning.

“The
British daily ‘The Independent’ on Thursday unveiled important
information on spying attempts made by the Israeli Mossad and
operations targeting the destruction of Israeli embassies abroad… the
paper added that the person who is accused of being behind the bombing
of the Israeli embassy in London in 1994, Rida Maghribi, was an agent
recruited by the Mossad and was assigned by Israeli foreign intelligence
for that purpose.”

“There
will be supreme tests of leadership in this unique situation
and people will have to trust the wisdom and good judgment of
those chosen to govern them.The executives must be empowered
to act resolutely and to take every measure necessary to protect
the citizens of their country and to carry the combat into whatever
territory the perpetrators and their temporal and spiritual leaders
are inhabiting.”He’s pleading with people simply
to give their lives and unquestioning souls over to people like
Bush and Sharon, so that there will be resistance to the destruction
of the people they choose.“…international law must be rewritten
in such a way as to permit civilization to defend itself.”He wants unrestricted powers given to governments
to take away all privacy and private property and to wage
“pre-emptive war” wherever it wants.“Private
enterprise will have to supplement the national effort in many walks of life.”Here,
he’s cutting the corporations in on the unlimited power.“the
democratic way of life will be hard-pressed to produce solutions that will
enable the executive branch to perform its duties…”Basically,
he’s saying that a dictatorship will keep you safe.

“Even the
IRA never managed to execute such a complex terrorist attack on British
soil. Not to mention the fact that MI5 later admitted that it was
members of the intelligence services that planned and executed the
majority of terrorist attacks on British soil that were blamed on the
IRA at the time…In typical 'false flag terror
attack' style, the mainstream media claimed that a group calling itself
the 'Al-Qaeda Organization in Europe' had accepted responsibility for
the attacks; an organization that no one has heard of before!”

“’Iran has linked the rise of Al-Qaeda to US policy in the
1980s, when the CIA and Saudi Arabia pumped billions of dollars into
hardline Islamist groups battling the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan
and went on to back the Taliban militia -- which Iran opposed.’”

“Will the mood more resemble post 9/11
USA
or
Spain
in the wake of the
Madrid
carnage? … The Blair government
will doubtless seek to use this morning's atrocity to escalate its alarming
attacks on civil liberties.”

“How
long are we going to permit this vicious tomfoolery to continue?Every time there's an embarrassing
incident, a charge of official malfeasance, or some nasty revelation
to cover up, the powers that be stage a terrorist incident - randomly throw away the lives of
an arbitrary number of innocents - and then blame some fantasy enemy
as an excuse to further ratchet up the corrupt oppression of ordinary
people.”

“The
only claim of responsibility came today on an Islamist Web site, posted
by a previously-unknown group. The site claimed the attacks
on
London
were carried out because of the presence of British troops in
Iraq
and
Afghanistan, but there was no
way to determine the authenticity of the claim or the group…High on
the list of suspects in today's attack is the same man who has been terrorizing
Iraq
- Abu Musab al Zarqawi.”A not-so-subtle hypnotic
suggestion from officials that Zarqawi (who did not claim responsibility
and whose very existence is unproven) carried out this crime.

“Actually,
I am surprised it took this long: Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi—the stuff of legend and ambiguous news reports
based on third-hand information and wild supposition—is responsible
for the London attacks last week. ‘Investigators in London are
probing whether Iraqi explosives—possibly provided by Al-Qaeda’s
top agent in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi—were used in last week’s
terror bombings,’ reports Yahoo News. ‘Al-Zarqawi is a potential source since
there’s an unlimited amount of explosives and munitions in
Iraq
that he controls,’ yet another unspecified
U.S.
official told Time magazine. ‘It’s just a matter of getting
it out of
Iraq
and to the right people.’ … It
should be noted there is absolutely no evidence al-Zarqawi had anything
to do with any of the above incidents…”

"Now they tell us:'
U.S.
intelligence has no evidence that terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi visited
Syria
in recent months to plan bombings in
Iraq
, and experts don't believe the widely publicized meeting ever happened,
according to
U.S.
officials,' reports Knight Ridder. [...]"Three
officials who said that the reports of Zarqawi's travels were apparently
bogus spoke on condition of anonymity because intelligence matters are
classified and because discussing the mistaken report could embarrass
the White House and trigger retaliation against them." [...]
"It is not so much that "some officials are still quick to embrace
dubious intelligence," but rather that they purposely create "flimsy
and bogus intelligence" (lies) as a matter of course." [...] "In
fact, there is no proof al-Zarqawi is doing anything-expect possibly pushing
up a tombstone somewhere in the Sulaimaniyah mountains of northern
Iraq
."

“Bill Montgomery's ‘Form over Substance’ goes
beyond expressing skepticism about the shadowy stories coming out of
Iraq
about top aides of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi being arrested. He suggests that the stories are a combination black psy-ops
operation to influence public opinion, and scripted
Hollywood
entertainment value. I would only add that it is now often forgotten
that the major politicians running
Iraq
are the same people who lied to the
US
public about Saddam's WMD and about Baath links to terrorism, etc.”

“Cockamamie…
The Boston Herald tells us the ‘terrorists’ (possible
patsies) in London ‘were all carrying personal documents’ because ‘they
wanted their identities to be known…’ …if this was
indeed the case the ‘terrorists’
(patsies) would have sent a statement to the newspapers, put a message
on the internet, done something to leave a mark. Nope… a normal
person would have big problems with this scenario, mostly because any documents…would be incinerated or blown to smithereens. But
miraculously, like Mohammed Atta’s passport found in the smoldering
rubble of the WTC (and in nearly pristine condition), the “personal
documents” of the native-born Pakistani heritage suicide bombers
were found in the wreckage.”

Eyewitness accounts
debunk official story of bomb in bag, suggest it was placed on underside
or tracks:

"The policeman said 'mind that hole, that's where the bomb
was'. The metal was pushed upwards as if the bomb was underneath
the train. They seem to think the bomb was left in a bag, but I don't
remember anybody being where the bomb was, or any bag"

One witness said the floor of the train he was standing on
was "blown out" and other witnesses spoke of a huge hole being torn out of the floor.

"The middle of
the train was blown out and there were people on the track. ... the floor of the train he was on was
blown out, it was just gone," he said."

"There is real passion now
in the police to make arrests quickly before further attacks can
be carried out…A group calling itself ‘The
Secret Organization of al-Qaida in Europe’ said in an Internet
statement that it staged the blasts in retaliation for
Britain
's involvement in
Iraq
and
Afghanistan
. Police said they couldn't confirm the authenticity
of the statement…In the end, authorities will have
to identify "’whatever failings exist, if any, in the intelligence
system that allowed this attack to take place, because it is an intelligence
failure…’"So,
it was a “failure of intelligence.”Must
be those pesky freedoms we all enjoy, getting in the way again.”

“I
prefer the hybrid model for all these attacks, by which I mean the involvement of real Islamic terrorists guided
by an intelligence agency. The intelligence agency funds much of
the operation, chooses the targets and the time, and provides technical
assistance. The Islamic terrorists provide most of the manpower. In
some cases the terrorists are completely fooled into participating…The attack will almost
certainly allow the imposition of fascistic ID cards on the British
population, a goal that was dead prior to the attacks due to the
complete rejection of the idea by the British public….The
Israelis got caught in a big mess attempting to claim that they were not given prior warning
by British officials, when they clearly were given such warning, and Netanyahu changed his plans because of the warning…Some are trying to argue that the
sophistication of the attack means that the West now has to throw all
caution to the winds and engage in a full fledged war against Islam.”

“As
a security technologist… It won't work. It won't make us more
secure.In fact, everything I've learned about
security over the last 20 years tells me that once it is put in place,
a national ID card program will actually make us less secure…the main problem with any ID system is
that it requires the existence of a database. In this case it would
have to be an immense database of private and sensitive information
on every American…”

“
SCOTLAND
YARD KNEW IN ADVANCE...That
the British Government knew in advance that blasts would occur is not
open to rational doubt…My thesis is that
the London deaths were designed to deliver an ultimatum in favor of early
war with Iran.”

“The
demand that we abandon rational thought, contextual analysis and critical
appraisal of why this happened and what we can do to limit the chances
that it will happen again, should not. To explain is not to excuse;
to criticise is not to capitulate.”

“
Downing Street
said the prime minister believed
an inquiry now into the outrage which killed at least 49 people would
be a ‘ludicrous diversion.’”Meaning that he wants to be the one to
interpret it for people and use it to his greatest advantage.The truth might not be so aligned with
his aim of restricting freedoms and increasing control.“He is expected to tell his counterparts governments must ensure operators keep data on telephone and internet
exchanges for up to a year.He
also indicated on Sunday that he would consider
granting further ‘control
orders’ if he thought they were necessary.”

“Home
Secretary Charles Clarke says firms across
Europe
should be ordered to retain phone and e-mail records to help track down
terrorists…‘"We should guarantee the full traceability of the movements of
terrorists’”Or
anyone, for that matter?“…proposing
that records of all private telephone calls, text messages and e-mails
be retained by telecommunications firms so they can be passed on to the
police and security services if necessary.”

“The
Government has decided to replace the Part 4 powers with a new system
of Control Orders. Control Orders would be applied
to any suspected terrorist, whether a
UK
national nor a non-UK national, whatever
the nature of the terrorist activity (international or domestic). The
control orders will enable the authorities to impose conditions ranging
from prohibitions on access to specific items
or services, and restrictions on association with named individuals,
to the imposition of restritions on movement or curfews.”This is executive broadening of the definition
of “terrorist” and removal of due process, as has already
been done in the
U.S.

“The
long-delayed report said the
UK has not been immune ‘to a tendency increasingly discernible
across Europe to consider human rights as excessively restricting the
effective administration of justice and the protection of the public
interest’…To
limit the application of human rights or to deny them was ‘to
effect ourselves of what terrorists wish to achieve’. Some control
orders constituted criminal punishment without trial.”

“An overwhelming majority
of Britons would support tough new measures to reduce the threat
of attacks after last week's deadly
London
bomb blasts, a poll by The Times newspaper showed on Tuesday.Some 86 percent of those questioned said they supported giving the police new powers
to arrest people they suspect of planning attacks and 88 percent
said they were in favour of tighter controls on who comes into the country...Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Monday
he may speed up the implementation of new anti-terror laws in the wake
of the
London
bombings.”

“Tony Blair is to hold talks with police and intelligence
chiefs to establish what further powers they need in the wake
of the
London
bombing atrocity…Mr
Clarke told MPs he wanted to apply more widely the home secretary's powers
to exclude an individual from the
UK
if their presence is deemed ‘not conducive to the public interest’.‘I
intend to draw up a list of unacceptable behaviours which would fall
into this - for example preaching, running websites or writing articles
which are intended to foment or provoke terrorism.’"There
you have it,
Britain
’s Homeland Security chief will personally determine the list of which
behaviors are in the public interest.

“Downing Street has rejected a call by Michael
Howard yesterday for a full inquiry into possible security failures
before the
London
bombings.”No
surprise – the
US
president rejected the same call for investigation into the events of
09/11.

“The
House passed the USA Patriot and Terrorism Prevention Reauthorization
Act of 2005 by a vote of 257-171…President Bush yesterday invoked the
terrorist attacks in
London
as a compelling reason for Congress to renew the
USA
Patriot Act…”

“Netanyahu told Sky television in a separate
interview that pressure should be applied by Western nations on Iran
and Saudi Arabia, countries he accused of supporting terrorist
groups…Some ordinary Israelis voiced hope the
London
bombings would cause the British and other Europeans, whom they regard
as biased in favor of the Palestinians, to have more sympathy for Israelis
killed or wounded in Palestinian attacks.”

“German
newspaper: Explosive material used by British terrorist who blew himself
up on Tel Aviv beachfront in 2003 very likely the same as that used
by terrorists who staged
London
attacks last week, Mossad tells Brits… Moreover, the Mossad office in London received
advance notice about the attacks, but only six minutes before the
first blast, the paper reports. As a result, it was impossible to take
any action to prevent the blasts.”

“Italian
police rounded up 142 suspects, more than half of them illegal immigrants,
in a massive two-day security sweep across the northern Lombardy region
in the wake of the
London
bombings…Reform
Minister Roberto Calderoli welcomed the arrests, saying recent events
in
London
had ‘demonstrated the need to intervene immediately to prevent
and stifle any attempt at a terrorist attack on our territory.’”

“
Pakistan
has been under pressure to act since it emerged that three suicide bombers
involved in the July 7
London
attacks were Britons of Pakistani origin who had recently visited the
South Asian country.”

“Since
the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the last century, Western powers have followed policies that
resulted in the social and cultural devaluation of the Arab and, by
association, the Muslim
Middle East.”

“Abdul
Munim sat amid the charred walls and smoky stench of his mosque yesterday
and reflected on levels of religious and racial intolerance that are
even worse than when he made
Britain
his home, 40 years ago.”Read the rest of the articles for a rundown of the hate crimes
perpetrated against Asians in the wake of 7/7.

“A
Muslim man has been beaten to death outside a corner shop by a gang
of youths who shouted anti-Islamic abuse at him…[Police]
say it was not connected to a backlash against Muslims following the
London
bombings, which has seen mosques firebombed and Muslims attacked in the
street.”

“Police
have recorded more than 1,200 suspected Islamophobic incidents across
the country ranging from verbal abuse to one murder in the past three
weeks. The poll suggests the headline figure is a large underestimate.”

“Special
intelligence units are being planned across
Britain
to monitor Muslims so the authorities can collect "community by
community" knowledge of where extremism is building up.”Why wouldn’t
Britons be Islamophobic when their gov’t sets such an example?“The source stressed that
the squads would be open about their work.”Apparently, a very visible example.

“Saying his words steered young men into terrorist training camps
… Judge Leonie M. Brinkema sentenced an American Islamic scholar to
life in prison Wednesday…Al-Timimi's
conviction for soliciting treason and other charges marked the first post-9/11
trial in which the government won a terrorism verdict for actions tied to words
designed to aid the enemy, rather than actual deeds such as providing money,
equipment or engaging in combat...Al-Timimi's
attorneys… characterized the scholar, who recently received a doctorate
for work related to cancer research, as a gentle man of peace who had never
been convicted of a crime or owned a weapon.”Now, entirely
non-violent people who are contributing members of society can be imprisoned
for life because of beliefs.This
is a hair away from Orwell’s concept of “thoughtcrime.”

“Livingstone
cited Western policy in the
Middle East
and early American backing for Osama bin Laden.‘A
lot of young people see the double standards…I
think the particular problem we have at the moment is that in the 1980s
... the Americans recruited and trained Osama bin
Laden, taught him how to kill, to make bombs, and set him off to
kill the Russians to drive them out of Afghanistan.’”

Please
note that in the intensely crowded
London
rush hour, the alleged bombers are alone in each photograph.And, stranger yet, though
London
bristles with government video surveillance, there was no video of the
alleged bombers nor of the explosions.

“At
present, the
London
underground has an analogue video network and video transmission at 180
stations. Confirmed by new reports, there are close to two thousand video cameras which monitor
London
's Underground and mainline rail stations… EVERY London bus and Underground train car has multiple Video Cameras!

The Police claim the bus videos malfunctioned,
but made no similar claim about the video cameras in the Underground
train cars. The Muslim men are claimed to have ridden from
Luton
to King's Cross where they split up to take separate trains. I've also
read it takes about 25 minutes to ride from
Luton
station to where the bombs were detonated.Therefore,
there MUST be some 25 minutes continuous video of first four men…”

“The realisation that Britons are ready to
bomb their fellow citizens is a challenge to the whole of society…If they had been a foreign cell, like
that responsible for the
Madrid
bombing, we could have comforted ourselves… But there can be no
such comfort if these killers were British citizens. We could shut out
every last asylum seeker, expel every illegal immigrant, and it would
make us no safer. This attack came from within.”Do you see where this is leading?Bringing the war, and the troops, to the “homeland.”

“Whoever was behind Thursday's attacks, they
managed to manufacture four explosive devices and smuggle them on
to the
London
transport network despite the highest levels of security and public watchfulness
in
London
for years.”So how’d they do it.This
should tell you that “authority” was behind this or that
all this security is nonsense and useless against stopping terrorists.So,
why in the world pass the laws and take away freedoms?“If the same group was involved,
the obvious question is why the first wave of attacks was so professional
and deadly and the second apparently so amateur.”

“Ask
the question, who benefits? …if the government wanted to get
those anti-terror measures through which were proposed after the 7/7
bombing, then this status of high alert is the perfect climate to get
them rammed through without dissent.Sky
News reported that members of parliament could be recalled tonight
in a special session for the express purpose of passing that legislation…This immediately stalls questions about the
first bombing.This further promulgates the fearmongering and creates a pliable public
that is willing to accept draconian anti-terror laws.On
the very day that the Patriot Act is due to be renewed, Bush can use
the alert level to grease the skids and bully Congress into re-authorizing
the bill.”

“Alarmed
onlookers said they saw up to 10 plain-clothed officers chasing an
Asian-looking man before opening fire.”The
victim was completely innocent, but didn’t this send a message
to the public from police?

“Witnesses said police chased him, he tripped, and police then
shot him.‘They
pushed him onto the floor and unloaded five shots into him. He's
dead,’ witness Mark Whitby told the British Broadcasting Corp. ‘He
looked like a cornered fox. He looked petrified.’”Again,
this man was not a criminal.

“WHEN
I was Commissioner of the Met it was my sad duty to end many, many
years of police tradition and bring in what's been called a shoot-to-kill
policy against suspected suicide bombers.Of
course, in reality it is a "shoot-to-kill-to-protect" policy,
to save innocent lives…There
is only one sure way to stop a suicide bomber determined to fulfil
his mission: Destroy his brain instantly, utterly.”Did the commissioner learn this from years of shooting suicide
bombers in the subways of
New York
?But, Mr. Commissioner,
there has never been one.“…the
vast majority of these people are driven by the most perverted, evil
version of Muslim extremism.”

“
New York
's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has apologised to a group of British tourists
after armed police swarmed on to an open-top sightseeing bus, handcuffed them
and forced them to kneel on Broadway.”

THE REAL
IRAQ
AND
AFGHANISTAN

Trend:Slaughter in
Iraq
continues unabated, rife with bombings, kidnappings, killings, attacks
on journalists and chaos that could result in civil war.Bush administration “stays the course” anyway
as more and more people point out the official lies.Suffering
of the Iraqi people increases under the occupation.The Iraqi forces the
US
are training use brutal torture, with
US
knowledge.Evidence of torture
and abuse of Iraqis by US personnel continues.Evidence
of mass destruction of Iraqi homes by US continues.Administration continues to ignore anti-war
protests at home.Bush described
as devoid of compassion.Tensions
and killings in
Afghanistan
rise sharply.War profits
continue to roll in from both battlegrounds.The
US
continues to face military recruiting shortfalls at home, and now ammunition
shortfalls in
Iraq
.Despite this, both Democrats and Republicans
plan to have an increased military (we wonder how).Because the government redefined death, the true death toll
of American troops in
Iraq
may be over 7000.Despite
all this, the ramp-up to physical confrontation with
Iran
continues.In American Conservative magazine appeared the leaked plan of VP Cheney
to use nuclear weapons in Iran should “another 9/11” occur
at home, regardless of who perpetrates it, revealing escalating madness
on the part of US leaders.As
more Americans realize the truth, President Bush’s popularity drops
to a new all-time low in the polls and he resorts to more speeches to
bolster war support, citing the development of the Iraqi constitution – a
process that appears to be badly bogged down in conflict, yet is almost
certain to incorporate Islamic law.

“Baghdad
has morphed into an assembly-line for extremists churning out enough
fanatics for 1,000 London-type bombings. This is Bush's work; and Blair's…American
newspapers are all breathlessly circulating their theory of "suicide
bombers" in headlines across the nation. Why not? It fits nicely
with the racist ideology the underscores Bush's war on terror.
Washington
knows that their support would disappear in a flash if they failed to
conjure up the requisite racial stereotypes that feed the public rage.
And, no one is better at demonizing and fear-mongering than the Bush
administration.”

“…this
evil crime was perpetrated by occupation forces with the objective
of murdering Iraqi children and blaming the national Resistance so
as to lessen its base of support (sounds like
Vietnam
tactics all over again -
Phoenix
).”

“Secret
torture chambers, the brutal interrogation of prisoners, murders by
paramilitaries with links to powerful ministries...Hanging by the arms in cuffs, scorching of the body with something
like an iron and knee-capping are claimed to be increasingly prevalent
in the new
Iraq
…These are not isolated cases. For what
is extraordinary is the sense of impunity with which the torture, intimidation
and murder is taking place…What
is extraordinary is that despite the increasingly widespread evidence of torture,
governments have remained silent.”

“IRAQI security
forces, set up by American and British troops, torture detainees by
pulling out their fingernails, burning them with hot irons or giving
them electric shocks, Iraqi officials say. Cases
have also been recorded of bound prisoners being beaten to death by
police…The abuse has not gone unnoticed
by the coalition, but little has been done to address it. A US State
Department report in February stated that Iraqi authorities had been
accused of
"arbitrary deprivation of life, torture, impunity, poor prison conditions
- particularly in pre-trial detention facilities - and arbitrary arrest and
detention." A Human Rights Watch report also noted that "unlawful
arrest, long-term incommunicado detention, torture and other ill-treatment
of detainees (including children) by Iraqi authorities have become routine
and commonplace".”

“Thousands
of residents are gradually returning to the town of
Karabila
, 325 km west of the capital,
Baghdad
, after fleeing a heavy US-led attack two weeks ago but for many there
is little to go back to...The
town, which is home to 60,000 people, showed signs of extensive devastation…”

“Cheney, has boasted he stands by his statement
that
Iraq
's insurgents are in ‘their last throes’, because it
all depends on what the meaning of 'throes' is…In
March to May there were 168 American soldiers killed and 534 wounded
in
Iraq
…Let’s think back to 1967, to the
quagmire in
Vietnam
. The
US
embassy in
Saigon
held a New Year's party to welcome 1968. The invitation read ‘Come
see the light at the end of the tunnel’.”

“Cindy Sheehan … what she encountered
was an arrogant man with eyes lacking the slightest bit of compassion,
a President totally ‘detached from humanity’ and a man
who didn’t even bother to remember her son’s name when
they were first introduced.”

“More than 800 people have died in a surge
of rebel attacks and government offensives since March, and
U.S.
and Afghan officials have warned that the violence is a threat to parliamentary
elections scheduled for Sept. 18…‘We
have supported the Americans for years. We should be treated with dignity," said
Shah Aghar, 35. "They are
arresting our people without the permission of the government. They are
breaking into our houses and offending the people. We are very angry.’”

“On
May 25th 2005, with hardly a smidgeon of news coverage,
U.S.
officials celebrated the completion of the first section of a 1,100-mile
U.S.-backed pipeline bringing
Caspian Sea
oil to Western markets. British Petroleum (B.P.) Chief Executive John
Brown, whose company leads the venture that built the pipeline, was in
attendance and ecstatic with dollar signs dancing in his head (and in
his bank account).”

“Despite
the scandals that
plague KBR's military contracts, the Pentagon awarded $70 million in
"award" fees to the company, along with four ratings of
"excellent" and two ratings of "very good" for the troop
logistics work under the Army's LOGCAP contract.The
Pentagon has provided preferential treatment to
Halliburton on a number of occasions, including the concealment from the public
of critical reports by military auditors.Audits conducted
by the Pentagon's Defense Contract Audit Agency determined that KBR had $1
billion in "questioned" expenses…”

“Last
week, Yasser Salihee, a reporter for Knight Ridder news agency, was
assassinated in a perfectly executed gangland-style hit a few miles
outside of
Baghdad
. He was struck by a single bullet to the head by an American sniper.”

“In
interviews, more than a dozen
[Republican] conventiongoers explained why it is important that they
stay on campus while other, less fortunate people their age wage a
bloody war in
Iraq. They strongly support the war, they told me, but
they also want to enjoy college life and pursue interesting careers. Being
a College Republican allows them to do both. It is warfare by other, much safer
means.”

“’With
supreme guts and righteousness, President Bush went into
Iraq
,’
Gov. Pataki told the Republican National Convention last August…Almost one year later, Pataki's son Teddy is, with supreme guts and righteousness, seeking a
three-year law school deferment from the Marines…The governor… himself
received a medical deferment during the Vietnam War… If the
cause in
Iraq
is even half as important as the governor has led us to believe, then
surely his son is more needed in Fallujah than in some
Cambridge
lecture hall.”

“The
governor, who proudly announced last week that his son has been commissioned
as a second lieutenant in the Marines, also noted that Teddy Pataki
hopes to defer his military service for three years…”

“For
the fourth month in a row, the army has fallen well short of its recruitment
targets. The result is that they're turning to some pretty unconventional
methods to persuade young Americans to do it for Uncle Sam.”

“Both the House and the Senate have called for an increase in troop
levels in their 2006 defense authorization bill and it is likely
that troop levels will be increased when the conferees meet.”Seems likely
that a draft, a new terrorist attack, or the collapse of the economy
will be needed to swell the military ranks.

“The
Pentagon is considering a change in its military strategy that
requires
U.S.
soldiers to be ready to fight two major wars at the same time, The New
York Times reported…Military officials are also considering
in detail what would happen if
the
U.S.
decided to attack
China
,
North Korea
or
Iran…”

“Official
US
. government reports on soldiers under US command killed in Iraq are
so fragmented that they account for less than half of the total number…more than 230 battlefront reports, which
reveal that more than 4,076 troops under US command have been killed
in 799 days of battle...large
discrepancies in counts have been publicized by news outlets such as
the national German Press Agency (DPA), which ran a story reporting on
US Army documents putting the number of US soldiers with war-related
mental ailments at 100,000.”

“U.S. Military Personnel who died in German hospitals
or en route to German hospitals have not previously been counted. They
total about 6,210 as of 1 January, 2005. The ongoing, underreporting
of the dead in
Iraq
, is not accurate. The DoD is deliberately reducing the figures…The government gets away with these huge
lies because they claim, falsely, that only soldiers actually killed
on the ground in
Iraq
are reported…Anyone
who dies just as the transport takes off from the
Baghdad
airport is not listed and neither are those who die in the
US
military hospitals.”

“’...DoD
lists currently being very quietly circulated indicate almost 9,000
[
U.S.
military] dead"; this far exceeds the ‘official’ death
count of 1,831. How can this be? It's largely because ‘U.S. Military
Personnel who died in German hospitals or en route to German hospitals
have not previously been counted.’In
other words,
"death" has been redefined.”

“A recent poll shows six
in ten Americans think a new world war is coming…this
ominous news, revealed in a recent issue of The American
Conservative by intelligence analyst Philip Giraldi:

"The
Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney's
office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM)
with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to
another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The
plan includes a large-scale air assault on
Iran
employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within
Iran
there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected
nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened
or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons,
hence the nuclear option. As in the case of
Iraq
, the response is not conditional on
Iran
actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the
United States
. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly
appalled at the implications of what they are doing – that Iran
is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack –
but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections."

Two
points leap out at the reader – or, at least, this reader – quite
apart from the moral
implications of dropping nukes on
Iran
. The first is the completely skewed logic: if
Iran
has nothing to do with 9/11-II, then why target
Tehran
? As in
Iraq
, it's all a pretext:
only this time, the plan is to use nuclear weapons. We'll wipe out the
entire population of
Iran
's capital city because, as Paul
Wolfowitz said in another context, "it's
doable."

The
other weird aspect of this "nuke
Iran
"
story is the triggering mechanism: a terrorist attack in the
U.S.
on the scale of 9/11. While it is certain that our government has developed
a number of scenarios for post-attack action, one has to wonder: why
develop this plan at this particular moment? What aren't they telling
us?I shudder to think about it.

The more I look at it, and the more I think of it, the more
I sense a monumental evil casting its shadow over the world, and
I have to tell you, it makes me wonder how much more time I want
to spend on this earth.

Where
oh where is the "mainstream" media on this? That's a laughable
question, because the answer is heartbreakingly obvious: they are nowhere
to be found, and for a very good reason. As the Valerie Plame case is
making all too clear, the MSM has been a weapon in the hands of the War Party at
every step on the road to World War…”

“So, how does our favorite administration
top the quagmire in
Iraq
? Start another quagmire in
Iran
, of course. And make sure there's a handy terrorism trigger to justify
it in the American collective mind...”

One
reader wrote, “This
is really nothng new. Cheney
was in command on 9/11, he chaired the Iraq working group and now he
is ordering up plans for nuking Iran. That doesn't surprise me
in the least.What caused my eyes to pop out of my
head was that these plans are in
case of another terrorist event in the
U.S.That is what it would take now, for the
American people not to have a flying hissy fit about turning yet another country
into middle ages rubble, and recruiting even more fanatics for the CIA
built Al Qeada.It would also
take the focus off Rove, for good. Two birds with one stone?”

Another
wrote, “Consider,
if congress is on vacation, Cheney's got the run of the town. He'll
do it, too. He don't care. He's old, stubborn, and narrow minded enough
to call in an airstrike on himself. He knows his world is going to
soon come crashing down around him, what with all the indictments and
damning evidence of broken laws and deception of congress and the american
people. He knows the curtain is being pulled aside to expose the machinations
of the neocon cabal, of which he is in the center of. Why wouldn't
he?”

“The
Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney’s
office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with
drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another
9/11…”

“
Iran
has always been the next target for the Bush administration, and Dick
Cheney has made this even more clear, according to leaked instructions
to generals from the Vice President. In the event of another 9/11 type
attack…”

“Lyndon
LaRouche, on this Wednesday afternoon, issued an international alert,
covering the period of August 2005, which is the likely timeframe for
Vice President Dick Cheney, with the full collusion of the circles
of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, to unleash
the recently exposed plans to stage a preemptive tactical nuclear strike
against Iran. The danger of such a mad, Hitler-in-the-bunker action
from the Cheney circles would be even further heightened, were the
United States Congress to stick with its present schedule, and go into
recess on July 30 until September 4. With Congress out of
Washington
, the Cheney-led White House would almost certainly unleash a "Guns
of August" attack on
Iran
.”

“…concerned that troops returning from the war zone may resign if
their spouses and parents raise objections to continued service…National Guard soldiers represent about
40 percent of the
U.S.
ground force in
Iraq
.”

“An
official of the Department of Veterans Affairs admitted last week that
it is short $1 billion for the current fiscal year, which ends Sept.
30, but giving short shrift to those who have served their country
is nothing new for this administration. For several years now, the
Bush bean counters have been slashing funds for veterans’ medical
care.”

"He's running scared," said Giblock, 63, a former
Post 2500 member who lives in
Anchorage
,
Ala.
"His poll numbers are so low, he's got to say something, but the support
is gone. It's gone. I don't think there's anybody in here who's behind him."

“In short, whether or not the invasion of
Iraq
was a crime, it's now clear that - at least in the form in which the
invasion and occupation was executed by the Bush administration - it
was a massive blunder.”

“The man who led
Britain
's armed forces into
Iraq
has said that Tony Blair and the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, will
join British soldiers in the dock if the military are ever prosecuted
for war crimes in
Iraq
.”

“A
Colorado
congressman told a radio show host that the
U.S.
could "take out" Islamic holy sites if Muslim fundamentalist
terrorists attacked the country with nuclear weapons…The congressman later said he was ‘just throwing
out some ideas’ and that an ‘ultimate threat’ might
have to be met with an ‘ultimate response.’”Consider that the neocon agenda is all-out war between East
and West.

“The
situation in
Afghanistan
is one of barely managed chaos…Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon and the White
House removed restraints on torture…In
April, the
US
succeeded in abolishing the office of the UN rapporteur on human rights
for
Afghanistan
.”

THE RISE OF TOTALITARIANISM

Summary:The courts have given the president the power
of life and death over
U.S.
citizens and others, without any due process and outside the dictates
of the constitution.This
has been accomplished step by step, inch by inch over the past four years – rights
and freedoms are being stripped away under the guise of a “war
on terror.”A dictatorship effectively exists already,
but won’t be obvious to most people until some policy, against
which they’ll have no recourse, impacts their personal comfort
zone.Until then, the
US
, as a nation, is apparently content to let this happen. The stories this month include:Evidence of Karl Rove as a traitor continues
to mount.Fear mongering
continues unabated.Media
pundits spew ever more hatred.The
police and secret agencies grow in power.Political
censorship by government and corporations against citizens grows.Protestors are increasingly harassed, gov’t critics
ridiculed.Less and less
serious offenses are becoming grounds for arrest.Government
secrecy grows.The Supreme
Court will likely get even more conservative.More evidences of government scandals surfaces.More evidence of official manipulation
of facts surfaces.Evidence
that 9/11 involved factions of the
US
gov’t continues to be put forth, and that the “war on terror” is
a scheme for increasing government and corporate power and profits.More about secret torture, rendition,
surveillance, police brutality, CIA misconduct overseas, hypocrisy, and
the development of “non-lethal” weapons for crowd control.Through it all, the administration is
protected from serious scrutiny by the mainstream media, who have 60%
of the
US
populace now expecting another World War.

Recommendation:read the whole article“…now the
very legal structures of the Republic are being dismantled…Bush has granted himself the power to
declare anyone on earth -- including any
U.S.
citizen -- an ‘enemy combatant … with no burden of proof’ …

“Perhaps the most important political question is
whether the Bush administration is to be held accountable for any
of its actions, or whether it now enjoys complete impunity and a
free field of action to do whatever it likes - from waging war
to designing and presiding over systems of torture to breaking domestic
law.”

“The ‘evil ideology’ that underscores
the war on terror is predicated on two basic theories; preemption
and enemy combatants. Both of these run counter to fundamental principles
of human rights and democratic governance. Both must be met head-on
and defeated. There is no wiggle-room for equivocating or appeasement; this ideology is the greatest manifestation of fanaticism in the world
since the rise of Nazism in the 1930's and must be collectively challenged...This makes the
US
the most dangerous nation in the world; brandishing its high-tech weaponry
at third world countries and threatening to attack if they fail to comply
with
Washington
's directives.”

“Once you have a public
fixated on this perceived enemy, it is necessary to maintain a
constant level of fear and when necessary ramp it up…every time Muslim, Islam, schools, indoctrination,
Quran, or any other ‘alien’ sounding word or connection
is made, it reinforces every stereotype that the government and
the media have implanted in the public’s mind about the nature
of this elusive, ‘cunning’ and
‘evil’ enemy...we
have all been here before, several times in the past one hundred years and
we all know what the outcome was every time; slaughter on an unimaginable scale
preceded by witch-hunts and the deliberate demonisation
of convenient segments of society. There is nothing new about the
current situation. When the state itself feels itself
under threat it will strike out using whatever means it has to hand. That there
are a tiny minority who will resort to the use of acts of individual violence,
is actually quite convenient for the state, for these can then be used to rationalise
the use of the overwhelming violence of the state in
‘retribution’.”

“On
Memorial Day, George W. Bush,
the world's most bloodthirsty and deceitful man strutted to the podium
at our National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, to once again regurgitate
his woefully shallow and inappropriate stump speech – ‘Across
the globe (sly smile), our military is standing directly between our
people and the worst dangers in the world (pause, smirk)...the war
on terror has brought great costs (no-nonsense head bob)...two terror
regimes are gone forever (narrowed eyes darting nervously back and
forth across the crowd), freedom is on the march (leaning forward earnestly),
and America is more secure.’Unfazed by plummeting
poll numbers at home or spiraling fatality numbers abroad, Bush remarked
with shudderingly bad taste that all headstones look alike…They applauded him. It was astonishing….Where
is the raw horror that Christians should feel for a charlatan who boasts
that he is on a mission from God -- a mission to rule over a world
of hate and lies and fear and death and disease?”

“The
House passed the USA Patriot and Terrorism Prevention Reauthorization
Act of 2005 by a vote of 257-171...Thursday's House vote made 14 temporary provisions
of the legislation permanent and extended two others that had been
scheduled to lapse at the end of the year.”

By
US Congressman, Ron Paul.“The tired arguments we're hearing
today are that same ones we heard in 2001 when the Patriot Act was
passed in the emotional aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks…America
was not founded on a promise of security, it was founded on a promise of
personal liberty to pursue happiness.”

“Bill O'Reilly
announced tonight that he will be exposing and naming all the people
and organizations he considers to be helping the terrorists on
his show each night…Has Bill O'Reilly lost his mind completely? Will Fox News
allow this to continue? First off, let's talk plainly. Bill O'Reilly
is calling people traitors not "terrorist helpers" and
he is doing this on national television. The audacity of this act
is beyond belief.”

“McCarthy-style witch hunts are coming back,
and the first place we'll be seeing them is at
Pennsylvania
's public colleges and universities…The
notion that leftists are in charge in academia, is as bogus as the notion
that the media are dominated by liberals...In
the 1950s, academics were attacked by Sen. Joe McCarthy and a gang of
right-wing zealots who equated liberals and free thinkers with Communist
fifth columnists and hounded many honorable teachers out of their jobs.”

“…(FBI) has amassed
at least 3,500 pages of internal documents from political protest
groups in what the targets say amounts to political surveillance
of some of President George W. Bush's leading critics.”

“Groups
Criticize Agency's Surveillance for Terror Unit…‘It's increasingly
clear that the government is involved in political surveillance of
organizations that are involved in nothing more than lawful First Amendment
activities,’ said Anthony Romero, executive director of the
ACLU. ‘It raises very serious questions about whether the FBI
is back to its old tricks.’”

“Comcast effectively censors discussion of
particular political topics, and impedes the ability of people to
associate with each other, with absolutely no compulsion to explain
itself. There is no due process. A phrase or web address is tried
and convicted in absentia and without the knowledge of those involved.”

“US INVESTIGATORS, including CIA agents, will
be allowed interrogate Irish citizens on Irish soil in total secrecy,
under an agreement signed between
Ireland
and the
US
last week.Suspects will
also have to give testimony and allow property to be searched and seized
even if what the suspect is accused of is not a crime in
Ireland
…The deal was condemned yesterday by the
Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) as "an appalling signal of how
the rights of Irish citizens are considered by the minister when engaging in
international relations"…The
person who will request co-operation is US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales,
the man who, as White House counsel, instigated the notorious 'torture memo'
to US President George W Bush which advised how far CIA agents could go in
torturing prisoners.”

“An
OswegoCounty
sheriff's deputy pulled Joshua A. Davies, 23, of 25B North St. in
Mexico
, out of the parade and charged him with disorderly conduct. Davies had
been walking in the parade carrying, Harris said, an "Impeach Bush" sign
and another sign calling for an end to the war in
Iraq
….‘This was a signal to the kids
that you can't do that here," Harris said. "Dissent, I mean. I thought
that's what being an American means – the right to protest, to speak
your mind.’”

“In one of the most serious legal
clashes between the media and the government in three decades, Time
magazine has complied with a court order to turn over the notes of
a reporter threatened with jail for refusing to identify a source.”

“According
to an article published Friday by Editor & Publisher, Assistant
to the President, Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor Karl Rove
is the confidential source who outed Valerie Plame to reporters as
a CIA operative.”

“The e-mails surrendered by Time Inc., which are largely between
Cooper and his editors, show that one of Cooper's sources was White
House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove…NEWSWEEK
reported that immediately after Novak's column appeared in July,
Rove called MSNBC "Hardball" host Chris Matthews and told
him that
Wilson
's wife was ‘fair game.’ But White House spokesman Scott
McClellan told reporters at the time that any suggestion that Rove had
played a role in outing Plame was
‘totally ridiculous.’”

“Rove
and his collaborators should quickly resign and face prosecution for
betraying their country, but given their sense of personal entitlement
impeachment is probably the best we can hope for. Congress, and all
Americans, should place patriotism ahead of party loyalty.”

“Rep
Henry Waxman howls in Congress that ‘The intentional disclosure
of a covert CIA agent's identity would be an act of treason. If Rove
was part of a conspiracy and intentionally disclosed the name ­ then
that jeopardizes national security’"

“How is it
that the second most powerful man in
America
is about to take a fall and the mainstream media are largely taking a
pass? Could it be that the fear of Karl Rove and this White House is
so great that not even the biggest of the media big boys are willing
to take them on? Does the answer to that one go without saying? …Just look at how the White
House press corps is dealing with the story: by avoiding it completely.”

“’Karl Rove is loyal to President Bush,’ a correspondent
wrote as Treasongate broke. "Isn't that a form of patriotism?" Not
in a representative democracy, I replied. Only in a dictatorship
is fealty to the Leader equal to loyalty to the nation.”

“Judith
Miller was sent to prison for refusing to name the source who published
the name of a CIA agent…‘This unprecedented sentence against a journalist who was merely
exercising her professional prerogative is a serious violation of international
law, a dangerous precedent, and the
United States
has sent a very bad signal to the rest of the world.’”

“by
34% to 25%, Americans have an unfavorable view of Rove; 25% have never
heard of him.”Possibly
the most powerful man in government, and 25% of Americans never heard
of him.People don’t
believe in secret government because they’ve never heard of it.Well,
this shows how many don’t even know the public government.

An excellent article about
how the
U.S.
has seemingly become a nation of glazed-over zombies.“…when it seems
that we cannot, when we – we who are free to select
from all of our extraordinary people not just some arbitrary nobility – still
select inbred dynastic fools to lead us, when we allow the most commonplace
of buffoons to guide the supertanker of state that is
America, Europeans take notice. When we get it wrong twice, they feel the sense
of failure and disappointment even before we do ourselves...What
blinded nearly 60 million Americans to the folly of casting their collective
lot with big-money-globalists and against their own? against their nation's
economy? against their families? against their freedoms? against their futures?
against their civil liberties? against their – and our - blood-won civil
Constitution?”

“Parentalism is in a sense more insidious: It emerges
when we begin to suspect that we ourselves are not competent to make
our own choices, to yearn for someone to relieve us of the burden of
choice.”Could this be
why we refuse to see the failings of our leaders?“Marxist
psychologist Erich Fromm diagnosed the totalitarian movements of the
20th century as symptoms of an urge to ‘escape from freedom,…’"

“Welch
not only learned about the U.S. government's pre-planning of 9/11 from
the bin Ladens back in 1987, but this week from her Albuquerque home
Welch added more, saying when working for NASA as a scientist on brain
development research in Phoenix, she obtained a secret computer code
and was able to uncover the findings of a government-funded project
titled "Global Cleanse 2000,"
a study outlining strategies for global war and population reduction.”Note:massive de-population has long been said
to be a major goal of the “power elite” and might include
everything from planned wars to induced starvation to deadly germ disbursement.“‘There is a global
catastrophe right around the corner and they may even make it look like
a natural disaster. But I saw the plans back in the 1980s and after 9/11.
I know it is going to happen unless we quickly get Bush out of power.’Welch
and Logsdon became aware of this radical element in our government, trying
to create this new world order, when they worked together as scientists
at NASA's Application Technical Center Institute in
Phoenix
.”

“Eyewitness
testimonies have generally been excluded from the official version
of 9-11. In the Shanksville area, where many residents believe Flight
93 was shot down, there are scores of eyewitnesses whose testimonies
contradict the government's claim that courageous passengers fought
hijackers, forcing the jetliner to crash rather than be flown into
a building.Some local
residents here are deeply offended by the official explanation of what
supposedly happened to United Airlines Flight 93, calling it a patriotic
pack of lies…An
IndianLake
resident told AFP that federal agents had visited the marina after Spinelli
had spoken to the
Pittsburgh
news channel, TV 4, and told him to stop talking about what he saw.Local firefighters were also told not
to talk about what they had seen at the crash site.”

“’I
finally walked out. They were trying to twist my words and make the
story fit only what they wanted to hear. All I wanted to do was tell
the truth and when they wouldn't let me do that, I walked out.’”

9/11
is
"’only a part of a mysterious but deadly Neo-Con puzzle’ and
the NeoCons are ‘making such fatalistic mistakes and are about as insane
as Hitler and the Nazi Party when they invaded
Russia
in the dead of the winter.’”

“If
clear evidence emerged showing George W. Bush had written in his diary
that he had lied to the American people to justify his invasion of
Iraq, would the U.S. media even consider that a story? … The
Senate committee promised last summer to probe what role the White
House may have played in concocting the faulty intelligence — but
only after the presidential election.Once the president was re-elected last
fall, the Senate committee chairman, Republican Pat Roberts, simply
cancelled the promised investigation of the White House's role… Roberts'
decision to let the administration off the hook on
Iraq
was barely covered in the media.”

“
US
President George W Bush has ordered the creation of a domestic intelligence
service within the FBI, as part of a package of 70 new security measures.The White House says it is enacting the
measures to fight international terrorist groups and prevent the spread
of weapons of mass destruction.The
authorities will also be given the power to seize the property of people
deemed to be helping the spread of WMD.”

“Bush's ‘grim
vision’ always recognized that the ‘war on terror’ abroad
would require restricted freedoms at home – as well as expanded
powers for the police and military. So, just as in 2002, when the ‘Bush
Doctrine’ on preemptive wars laid the intellectual groundwork
for invading Iraq, new doctrines are now being promulgated to justify
the creation of a full-scale ‘security state’ inside the
United States…the ‘Strategy
for Homeland Defense and Civil Support,’ sets out a military
strategy against terrorism that envisions an ‘active, layered
defense’ both inside and outside U.S. territory…The likelihood of
U.S.
military operations overseas will be high throughout the next 10 years…the Bush administration is prescribing
a large dose of military action and political repression as the cure
for Islamic terrorism.”

“"Those
who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must
therefore answer a difficult question: Why would we trade a system
that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly? … The
First Amendment, after all, was enacted to protect unpopular ideas.
Think about it: Popular ideas hardly need protection…Without that broad tolerance of dissent --
even flag-burning -- the flag loses much of its meaning…Since we're sacrificing so many lives
to promote our democratic ideals in the
Middle East
, you'd think we'd show a little more respect for them here at home. "

“A
federal appeals court yesterday backed the Bush administration's plan
to let special panels of military officers conduct trials of terrorism
suspects…The ruling was an important test of the
government's strategy of denying such detainees access not only to
civilian courts but also to the more formal proceedings of military
courts-martial, in which they would enjoy additional rights and legal
protections…The panel said courts should defer to
President Bush's decision in 2002 that the Geneva Conventions do not
apply to detainees…lead
civilian counsel, Georgetown University professor Neal Katyal, denounced
the decision as
‘contrary to 200 years of constitutional law.’”This decision gives the president
unchecked power to create an alternate justice system, outside the constitution,
that he controls entirely.

“’Paradoxically,
preserving liberty may require the rule of a single leader—a
dictator—willing to use those dreaded ‘extraordinary measures,
which few know how, or are willing, to employ.’ … ‘We
should not be outraged by Machiavelli’s call for a temporary
dictatorship as an effective means to either revivify or restore freedom.’ … The
belief in a single voice that governs the public should cause all Americans
to understand these men want to convert this nation to a permanent
dictatorship.”

“Apparently, it's alright to incinerate Iraqis, but not okay to
burn a 5'x7' piece of tri-colored cloth…The
flag burning issue is mainly a way for puerile congressman to entertain
themselves while the matters of state are conducted by an iron-fisted
White House…‘The
flag’, Einstein wrote, ‘is proof that man is still a
herd animal’. We gather around these tribal symbols to identify
ourselves with the gaggle of humanity, excluding
‘the other’ as a vital threat to our survival... The Bush Administration
has been particularly astute at marshalling the dormant energy of terror and
putting it to use in carrying out its radical agenda.”

“There is no longer anything
resembling "private property" in this country. There
is only the illusion of ownership, as long as it is allowed
by your government…The
U.S.
government simply kidnaps anyone they want, ships them off to Gitmo,
then leaves them there to rot, without being charged, without a trial,
and without legal representation…That
our own government is systematically destroying the Bill of Rights is
proof that our forefathers were correct… we have a police state,
operated under the illusion of freedom.”

“War without end. Rape of Mother Earth by
faceless corporations. Exploitation of the poor. Subjugation of the
masses. 9/11/01 marked the beginning of a new era of profound
fear and suffering for the human race. Contrary to the Ministry of
Truth of the
United States
government, the terrorists are not the source of this misery. A malevolent
force has taken root in the
United States
. This force is rendering damage terrorists can only fathom in a dream… Bush
spreads fear and loathing, not
‘freedom and liberty’…”

When
people cede something to the government, they rarely get it back.“The Spanish-American War may have
ended over a century ago, but anyone in the
U.S.
with a telephone line is paying a 3 percent "luxury" tax created
to fund the conflict in 1898...The
obscure telecommunications tax took center stage in January when a congressional
committee suggested the tax could be extended to include
"all data communications services" including broadband, dial-up,
fiber, cable modems, cellular and DSL (digital subscriber line) links. In addition,
the Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department have said they are
considering whether the tax should apply to Internet phone calls.”

“…using
a more stringent definition of terrorism, the State Department and
the counterterrorism center had tallied 651 significant international
terror attacks with more than 9,000 victims…the
shift was primarily the result of new, broader criteria for what constitutes
a terror attack.”This is convenient for broadening the “war on terror” and
being able to identify more people as “terrorists,” allowing
for greater use of all those new “anti-terror” laws.

“The
U.S.
military is holding five
U.S.
citizens suspected of insurgent activities in
Iraq
…Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the
U.S.
government has held more than 70,000 people in
Iraq
,
Afghanistan
and
Guantanamo Bay
,
Cuba
.”

“This
past Sunday, U.S. President George Bush said that the
United States
is committed to eliminating torture worldwide…Contrary
to Bush's rhetoric, the
U.S.
has also been a major stumbling block in the world's attempt to build
effective institutions to deal with the problem of torture and war crime…Far
from being committed to ending torture, the present U.S. administration
under Bush has not only failed to act against torture, except when
to do so aids the pursuit of some other self-serving purpose, it has
actually endorsed torture in some instances, trained people to carry
it out, and supplied implements of torture to repressive regimes.”

“Don't
you just feel safer? Don't you just sleep better at night knowing that
our glorious leader detained a whole lot of folk by lying? Don't you
feel just warm and democratically snuggly knowing that torture is used
in your name on folk that did not one thing to you?”

“My
own humble proposal to put an end to war and terrorism everywhere is
somewhat different, namely that the International Criminal Court in
The Hague be empowered to investigate, indict and try every high-level – and
only high-level –
governmental leaders whose policies have led to the murder of civilians.”

“…Bush
nominated conservative judge John Roberts to the US Supreme Court,
a move that could shape the outcome of battles over volatile issues
like abortion for decades.Republicans
welcomed the choice of a candidate with a reputation as a brilliant
lawyer with right wing credentials…‘nobody
really knows what (he) believes, because he has been unusually careful
about not discussing his views.’”

“…Roberts' most dangerous decision, issued just last Friday, when,
as part of a panel of appeals judges, he upheld Bush's outrageous claim of dictatorial powers:
the right to dispose of anyone he arbitrarily designates an ‘enemy
combatant’
as he sees fit; in this case, sending them to the kangaroo court ‘military
tribunals’ he has concocted…Roberts'
decision is part of an on-going process of elevating the president beyond
the reach of law…What we
are witnessing is the creation of a ‘
Commander-in-ChiefState
,’ where the form and pressure of law no longer apply to
the president and his designated agents.’ … George
W. Bush has granted himself the power to declare anyone on earth – including
any American citizen – an 'enemy combatant,' for any reason he
sees fit. He can render them up to torture, he can imprison them for
life, he can even have them killed, all without charges, with no burden
of proof, no standards of evidence, no legislative oversight, no appeal,
no judicial process whatsoever except those that he himself deigns
to construct, with whatever limitations he cares to impose.”

“Although
nominees in recent decades were required to provide their three most
recent annual tax forms, the administration will neither collect such
documents from Roberts nor share them with the Senate Judiciary Committee…”

“…shortly
after a meeting with the visiting Indira Gandhi. "We really slobbered
over the old witch," says President Nixon. "The Indians are
bastards anyway," says Mr Kissinger. "They are starting a
war there." He adds: "While she was a bitch, we got what
we wanted too….”Nice to know
that our leaders act instinctively out of rational thought first, and
could never stoop to anything as childish as name-calling.When
will people realize that leaders become leaders because they are self-interested
and are seeking control of others?The most successful are the most ruthless.The well-intentioned and moral in politics
are destroyed by it.The
president is well known to be incredibly foul-mouthed, even in the
presence of foreign leaders.

“A radical Egyptian cleric allegedly kidnapped from
Italy
by the CIA once provided the American spy agency with valuable information
about Islamic militants in
Albania
, according to a published report.”

“Among democracies, only in
America
do soldiers and other uniformed servicemen figure ubiquitously in political
photo ops and popular movies. Only in
America
do civilians eagerly buy expensive military service vehicles for suburban
shopping runs…a
perilous time in our history, one I do not think enough people take seriously.
Too many people in
America
are a-historical. It seems to me they think that we are immune to history's
worst impulses.”

“
France
and the
United States
are cooperating on a unique antiterror partnership, tasked with analysing
the transnational movements of terror suspects and developing operations
to catch or spy on them, the Washington Post reported Sunday…Funded largely by the CIA's
CounterterroristCenter
, Alliance Base consists of small numbers of
US
intelligence case officers working with handfuls of foreign operatives,
often in tentative arrangements.

“’It does a reasonable job of matching people that sort of
look alike,’ Pixlogic chief executive officer Joseph
Santucci said.”Apparently,
the cameras we have everywhere already do not amount to enough surveillance
of the public.

“The
‘less-than-lethal’ weapons have been involved in 74 deaths in the
United States
and
Canada
, according to Amnesty International.It
also claims Tasers have been used gratuitously - against children or
the elderly or on people posing no real threat.”

“Criminal governments, corrupt media, comatose
public: the perfect combination to permanently eradicate the human
species…The dire predictions of so-called conspiracy
theorists are all coming true: senseless
wars are being created with transparent lies for the profits of a
select few; the populace is infected with obvious poisons from
both the medical profession and the food industry who because of
recently passed laws are immune from legal action by the victims
of these cruel concoctions; and our money is being steadily stolen
by inbred elitist bankers who use accounting sleight-of-hand to funnel
currency to that same small segment of the population who all seem
to be immune from laws that guarantee poverty for the rest of us…Isn't it strange so few Americans have
objected to the new, out-front use of torture on people who have
never even been tried in a court of law - never mind convicted -
especially when underground reports of those taken prisoner and persecuted
at Guantanamo reveal them not as terrorists but as hapless victims
abducted to lend apparent authenticity to a minor detail of Washington's
contrived terror fantasies?”

“The
Bush administration is abandoning the phrase ‘war on terror’ … senior
administration figures have been speaking publicly of ‘a global
struggle against the enemies of freedom’, and of the need to
use all ‘tools of statecraft’ to defeat them.”

“Canadian
businessman Maurice Strong has lost his job as the United Nations top
envoy to
North Korea
over his connection to the oil-for-food scandal, said the UN.”Strong advocates the collapse of the industrialized nations.See here.

“The
truth is that we are trained
to value the lives of our countrymen more highly by a socio-political
system that has much to gain from a restricted, patriotic version of
compassion, and much to lose from an excess of popular concern
for suffering inflicted on 'foreigners' by our governments and corporations…If
they do something to us, the world is coming to an end. But if we do
it to them, it's so normal, why should we even talk about it?”

THE SINKING
U.S.
ECONOMY

Trend:Oil hits record high prices.Commodity prices in general continue
rising, suggesting lack of confidence in stock markets. U.S.
housing bubble thought near to breaking as home mortgages, property taxes
and general inflation increase -- could sink economy of US and the world. US
job creation is weak, continues losing jobs to overseas.True
US
deficit is staggering.Corporate
profits are down, defaulting on pensions is up.Rich getting richer, poor getting poorer.Other nations concerned about
US
debt. Israel
wants US to foot the bill for their pullout of settlements from
Gaza
.

“Halfway
through 2005, the stock market has nothing to show for itself. And
if you're waiting for the Federal Reserve to stop raising interest
rates before you buy equities, don't hold your breath...the
economy is navigating myriad threats to growth.”

“Bush said the improving deficit
picture vindicated his stewardship of the economy and budget…‘Over the last three years,
the Bush administration has posted the three worst deficits in history
and though the deficit for 2005 has improved, it remains among the
largest on record.’”

“When the
U.S. Treasury reported the official 2004 federal budget deficit at
a record $413 billion last October, the hisses and boos in the financial
media were unrelenting. Two months later, the Treasury reported the actual 2004
deficit using generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) to
be an incredulous $11.1 trillion, up from $3.7 trillion in 2003,
yet nary a word was heard in the financial media, from Wall Street
or from any political denizen… For nearly four decades,
officially sanctioned accounting gimmicks have masked federal deficit
reality.”

“For
two months now, federal banking regulators have signaled their discomfort
about the explosive rise in risky mortgage loans.First
they issued new "guidance" to banks about home-equity loans,
warning against letting homeowners borrow too much against their houses.
Then they expressed worry about the surge in no-money-down mortgages,
interest-only loans and "liar's loans" that require no proof
of a borrower's income.The
impact so far? Almost nil.”The
“easy money” that’s out there, designed to stimulate the
economy, has placed home-buying within the grasp of a vast number folks who
can’t truly afford it.These
folks are betting on rates staying low (but they can’t) or wages rising
(but they haven’t in thirty years).So,
losing the bet will mean financial ruin for these consumers and a dire threat
to the solvency of lending institutions and then to the entire
U.S.
economy.

“If
creditors face an endless stream of additional borrowing and a good
chance of default at the end of it, they should refuse to throw good
money after bad. They will then impose huge costs on the debtor.”

“In
recent years, some eminent pundits
and top government officials have become brazen about praising war
as a good investment…‘Since the
United States and its coalition partners have invested a great deal
of political capital, as well as financial resources, as well as the
lives of our young men and women -- and we have a large force there
now -- we can't be expected to suddenly just step aside…’I
went through the latest annual reports from some American firms with
Pentagon contracts. Those reports acknowledged, as a matter of fact,
the basic corporate reliance on the warfare state.”

“fewer workers
are able to amass any significant savings or put money away for retirement.
Instead, they have been forced deeper and deeper into debt...pay for American CEOs has continued to rise, reaching
levels far in excess of pay for executives anywhere else.”

“…
Israel
…wants the American taxpayers to cough up $2.2 billion in addition
to our regular $3 billion-or-so annual subsidy to pay for the withdrawal
from
Gaza
…A normal president would view
Sharon
's actions as unacceptable…If
Washington
gives in, we taxpayers will be spending about $227,000 per Jewish settler.”

WHAT’S REALLY HAPPENING IN
ISRAEL/PALESTINE?

Trend:Ariel Sharon appears to be every bit as dishonest
and as far to the radical right as the top members of the US administration,
hell bent on destruction, yet there are factions in the Israeli government
who want him out of office because he’s not radical enough! Israel
prepares for pullout of 8000 settlers from
Gaza
, though some fear this will be followed by a massive increase in Israeli
hostilities there.Violence
continues, with Palestinians taking the brunt of the casualties. Israel
, drifting toward theocracy, continues to pass laws and take other measures
that discriminate against the native Palestinians, and continues to interfere
with US politics via lobbying groups such as AIPAC, recently implicated
in spying.Yasser Arafat
is confirmed to have been murdered, and Steven Spielberg starts a film
about Israeli assassins.

“A group of extreme rightists said they had held a ceremony and
placed a death curse on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon … Tuesday's
ceremony organizers included Rabbi Yosef Dayan, who was among the
rabbis who had placed a death curse on Rabin.”

How
foreign countries interfere in
U.S.
politics:“Asher went on, ‘He beat
Findley with a lot of help from Jews, in-state and out-of-state. Now,
how did the Jewish money find him? I travelled around the country talking
about how we had the opportunity to defeat someone unfriendly to
Israel
. And the gates opened.’ Durbin, who went on to win a Senate
seat, is now the Democratic whip…Rosen's
main role at AIPAC, he once told me, was to collect evidence of "Iranian
perfidy"
and share it with the
United States
…He was fired earlier
this year by Howard Kohr, nine months after he became implicated in an F.B.I.
espionage investigation.”

“Israel's government is taking gigantic steps
towards instituting a theocratic rule of control…In
an effort to boost
Israel
's Jewish population, the government opened immigration lines with the
former
Soviet Union
's Jewish community. However, over 60% … live in mixed marriages. …the
non-Jewish partner in such marriages cannot bring his or her children
to live with them in
Israel
if they do not come together - even if they do, the child cannot become
an Israeli citizen. Such a child, like so many Palestinians living in
Israel
, has to live without any legal rights or status.

“The
cabinet on Sunday approved a plan to build 11 passages through the
Jerusalem
barrier. The ministers did not
explain how they would ensure quick passage of tens of thousands of Arab
residents who need to get to schools, jobs and hospitals and the
centre of the city.”

“Israeli occupation forces are preventing
Palestinians from passing through gates in the separation barrier
to work their farms…other
gates, such as Gate 45, had been shut for more than 18 months and
that farmers had no practicable access to their own land…”

“…accused
Jewish settlers of "poisoning" the lands in the settlements
slated for evacuation. Dahlan told reporters in
GazaCity
that the aim of
"poisoning" the lands was to cause severe damages to them so that
the Palestinians would not be able to use them after the Israeli pullout.”

“All the world saw the horror on TV: a Palestinian
boy lying on the ground, unconscious. An Israeli soldier bending
over him, not knowing what to do. A settler coming up from behind
and throwing a stone at the head of the injured Palestinian. Another
settler dropping a big stone on him at point-blank range. A bearded
medic, also a settler, approaches the wounded boy, hesitates, and
then goes away without treating him, pursued by the chants of a chorus
of settler boys and girls: ‘Let him die! Let him die!’”

“Mohamed al-Missimi, 17, was killed after
being shot in the head by Israeli soldiers, said the medics at
a hospital in
Nablus
…local Palestinian residents said the
killed was a 17-year-old teen and was not holding a gun.”

“In
the videos Jewish youths are
heard shouting
"lynch him, lynch him", and seen throwing stones.The Palestinian took a few direct blows
to the head and lost consciousness.His
life was saved thanks to a few IDF soldiers and journalists who took him to
saftey.”

“Though legal proof is not and may never be available -- short
of a 'Deep Throat' coming forward --
the overwhelming preponderance of circumstances, threats, and evidence
traces the assassination to the Israelis with American, and in fact
with some Palestinian, connivance.”

“There's
no Palestinian state in a unilateral move. The
real purpose of the move is to derail the road map and kill the comatose
peace process. For
Sharon
, withdrawal from
Gaza
is the prelude not to a permanent settlement but to the annexation of
substantial sections of the
West Bank
.”

“
ISRAEL
IS SET to evacuate its settlements from the Gaza Strip in mid-August.”Many watchers
are certain that this is a ploy by
Sharon
to enhance
Israel
’s grip on the West Bank, were there are 30 times as many settlers as
in
Gaza
.

“A
Warning from
Israel
…We believe that one primary, unstated
motive for the determination of the government of the State of Israel
to get the Jewish settlers of the Qatif (Katif) settlement block out
of the Gaza Strip may be to keep them out of harm's way when the Israeli
government and military possibly trigger an intensified mass attack on
the approximately one and a half million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,
of whom about half are 1948 Palestine refugees…The
scenario could be similar to what has already happened in the past -
a tactic that Ariel Sharon has used many times in his military career
- i.e., utilizing provocation
in order to launch massive attacks.”

“For
a second day running, thousands of extra soldiers and armoured vehicles
remained deployed across the border with
Gaza
, awaiting the green light for a threatened large-scale assault, should
rocket attacks continue.”

“Two
Israel Defense Forces soldiers from an infantry regiment of ultra-Orthodox
troops were arrested on suspicion of placing a fake bomb at the
Jerusalem
central bus station last week…

Since
the beginning of March, right-wing extremists have planted six dummy
bombs: two in a Tel Aviv train station and four in
Jerusalem
. In those incidents the fake bombs also bore notes reading, ‘The
disengagement will explode in our faces.’”

“Even to raise the topic of
Israel
’s extra-legal assassination policy requires walking on eggshells.Mr.
Spielberg quietly began filming the most politically charged project
he has yet attempted: the tale of a secret Mossad hit squad ordered to
assassinate Palestinian terrorists after the massacre of Israeli athletes
at the 1972 Olympics in
Munich
…Indeed, the movie's terrain is
so packed with potential land mines that, associates say, Mr. Spielberg has
sought counsel from advisers ranging from his own rabbi to the former American
diplomat Dennis Ross, who in turn has alerted Israeli government officials
to the film's thrust. Mr. Spielberg has also shown the script to Mr. Ross's
old boss, former President Bill Clinton. Mr. Clinton's aides said Mr. Spielberg
reached out to him first more than a year ago and again as recently as Tuesday.
Mr. Spielberg is also being advised by Mike McCurry, Mr. Clinton's White House
spokesman, and Allan Mayer, a Hollywood spokesman who specializes in crisis
communications.”

U.S.
DEMONIZING
CHINA

Trend:Bad press continues to increase against
China
, which the
US
knows is its ultimate rival for power and control of the world.This month, the Chinese ban US beef.They are blamed for higher oil prices
by building their own strategic reserve tanks.They
are identified as a dangerous enemy by the
US
military, even a nuclear threat. China
responded with the threat of nuclear retaliation in case of attack by
the
US
. China
joined with
Russia
in demanding US exodus from central Asia and joined with
India
in expressing concern over the political activities of the US-funded
National Endowment for Democracy. China
did give in to US pressure to unpeg its currency from the dollar, but
it’s unknown if a more expensive yuan will really help make US
products more attractive.

“China's overall oil use declined 1 percent in the second quarter
from the comparable quarter a year earlier, the agency said…world
oil prices could take a heavy blow if Chinese use did not increase…Mr. Birol said there had been
a vigorous debate in the last two days within the International Energy
Agency over how to explain the decline in Chinese consumption, and
he acknowledged that other, longer-term explanations were possible.”

“A
Pentagon report on
China
's military is being worked on by several
U.S.
government agencies, the Defense Department said on Tuesday, suggesting
an expanded drive to make sure it meshes with the Bush administration's
views…The report is sensitive because
China
has objected strongly to being portrayed by the
United States
as a growing threat to the military balance in
Asia
.‘The
wave of '
China
military threat theory' whipped up by the
U.S.
military is a dangerous practice,’ People's Daily said … ‘setting
up all kinds of obstacles in the way of the development of Sino-U.S.
relationships…’”

“Chinese
military experts said Pentagon's
annual report on Chinese military power is full of ‘guesswork
and prejudices’ and it reflects the animus and ambivalence
of certain forces in the
United States
toward
China
's peaceful rise.”

“The Chinese government on Monday sharply criticized the
United States
for threatening to erect barriers aimed at preventing the attempted
takeover of the American oil company Unocal Corp. by one of
China
's three largest energy firms, CNOOC Ltd.”

“China
Severs Currency's Peg to the U.S. Dollar, Retains Controls on Its Exchange
Rate… Malaysia
simultaneously announced it was dropping its own policy tying its currency,
the ringgit, to the U.S. dollar and would adopt a similar arrangement.”

“
US
Treasury Secretary John Snow had warned
China
that if it did not move on its currency by mid-October, the White House was prepared to name
China
as a currency manipulator, a move that might have led to trade
retaliation.”

“…Asia's
No. 2 economy has a disturbing amount of leverage over the
U.S. If
U.S.
politicians want to protect national security, they should be looking
at how much their government is becoming indebted to
China
…What if
China
began dumping
U.S.
debt? …The
U.S.
used to fear
Japan
, the biggest holder of
U.S.
debt, in this regard. Japanese officials in the past have made not-so-veiled
threats about pulling the plug on
U.S.
debt… China
and other Asia nations have made it possible for the
U.S.
to live far beyond its means.”

“The
Pentagon is considering a change in its military strategy that
requires
U.S.
soldiers to be ready to fight two major wars at the same time, The New
York Times reported…Military officials are also considering
in detail what would happen if
the
U.S.
decided to attack
China
,
North Korea
or
Iran...‘War with
China
or
North Korea
or
Iran
... would require a much more capable Navy and Air Force,’ "War
with
China
or
North Korea
or
Iran
... would require a much more capable Navy and Air Force…”

“A regional alliance led by China and Russia called today for the
United States and its allies in Afghanistan to set a date for withdrawing
from several states in Central Asia, reflecting growing unease at
the U.S. military presence in the region…The
United States
rejected the call for a deadline… The military said
Uzbekistan
hosts at least 800
U.S.
troops, while 1,200 U.S.-led troops are in
Kyrgyzstan
… Russia
's suspicion of the West has increased recently amid speculation the
United States is encouraging the overthrow of
Central Asia
's pro-Russian governments.”There
is strong evidence that the
US
is funding the “soft revolutions” in former Soviet republics
and in
Lebanon
.

“Fresh
from its perceived success in
Kyrgyzstan
, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), an American non-governmental
organization, has a new mission in
Nepal
, where King Gyanendra has assumed autocratic powers… Beijing
has even more reason to concern itself with the NED's presence in
Nepal
, next door to sensitive
Tibet
. The NED makes no bones of its concerns about Uighur Chinese, and is
known to have earlier funded anti-China forces in
Tibet
…The significant aspect of the NED, however,
is its recent role in the "color-coded" revolutions in Central Asia
- in the backwaters of
Russia
. Those "democratic revolutions"
were designed to help
Washington
and antagonize
Moscow
and
Beijing. It is too early to tell whether these "revolutions" will have
the necessary staying power - but what is certain is that the NED was an active
player…The most notable
of NED's
"conquests" in recent months took place in
Kyrgyzstan
…India
's worries concerning the NED are broad and indirect..Formed during the Ronald Reagan era in the 1980s, the
NED is a favorite of the Bush administration. In fact, on the issue of spreading
democracy around the globe, the Bush administration and the NED are in total
sync. Not for nothing, President George W Bush, in his January 22, 2004,
state of the union message, vowed to double the NED budget… China
is a more direct target of the NED. Reports have confirmed the identification,
looting and arson of Chinese and Turkish properties in Bishkek on the evening
the "Tulip" revolution" took to the streets and drove out
Akayev.”

“SCO:
US GET OUT OF CENTRAL ASIA-The US, UK and Israel have been on the
brink of war with Iran for at least a year, and the rogue network is
generally aware that time is not on its side. There is also an important
new development which threatens the ability of the Anglo-Americans
to wage war. On July 5, the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
(SCO), which brings together China, Russia, Uzbekistan, Krygyzia, Kazakhstan,
and Tajikistan plus new members India, Pakistan, and Iran, issued a
call for the United States to vacate the bases seized in the autumn
of 2001 under the cover of the 9/11 emergency and the looming invasion
of Afghanistan. The parties to this call represent about half of the
world's population. “

"’If
the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition
on to the target zone on China's territory, I think we will have
to respond with nuclear weapons,’
said General Zhu Chenghu.”Shocked?What
about these bits from March 2002:Britain
'Prepared to Use Nuclear Weapons' and US
plans widespread use of nuclear weapons in war – “Bush orders Pentagon to target seven nations
for attack.These
include
China
and
Russia
, the two powers which have long been targeted by the
US
nuclear arsenal;
Iraq
,
Iran
and
North Korea
, the three countries demonized by Bush as the "axis of evil" in
his State of the Union speech; and
Libya
and
Syria
.”

UZBEKISTAN

Summary:Last month saw the brutal slaying by government
troops ( most recently trained by the U.K.) of anti-dictatorship protestors
in Andijan, Uzbekistan, a police state ruled by the tyrannical Islam
Karimov, one of President Bush’s close allies.Well
documented stories describe the
U.S.
policy ofrendering suspected
criminals to that country’s prisons, where they often undergo torture.

“It
demanded an international inquiry into ‘what amounted to a mass
killing.’Uzbek opposition groups and human rights
activists claim more than 700
people - mostly unarmed civilians - were killed on May 13 in Andijan…The report also
said there was urgent need for neighboring countries to halt deportations
of Uzbek asylum seekers and Andijan witnesses back to their home, saying
they would face the risk of torture if returned to
Uzbekistan
.”

“Uzbek
authorities have begun the trial of a former director and another employee
of the U.S.-based media rights and training organization, Internews
group, the Svoboda radio station reported Monday…Karimov
has alleged that Western organizations helped the opposition in those
two countries [
Georgia
and
Ukraine
].”

NORTH KOREA

Summary:Inexplicably, despite open threats against the
U.S.
,
North Korea
has not received the treatment of
Iraq
, which never threatened the
U.S.

“’The
people who are at the camps, the [North Korean] government wants to
kill them all,’ Kang Chol-hwan said in an interview with The
Washington Times. ‘Instead of executing them, they kill them
slowly, making them work in forced labor...’”

Trend:The war of words between the
US
(dominated by the right wing and the power elite) and
Venezuela
(led by the leftist president Hugo Chavez, who is sharing the national
wealth with all the people), although in a lull this month, continues. Venezuela
is the fifth-largest oil-producing nation in the world, and thus of great
interest to those who seek to control the world’s resources.

“Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez stressed state sovereignty in a speech to mark
the oil-rich South American country's Independence Day on Tuesday. ‘Here
the Venezuelans rule; there is no hegemonic power from any other part
of the world that has to do with the sovereign decisions taken in
Venezuela
.’”It’s clear
who he’s talking about.“Chavez, a fierce critic of the United States,
has accused the Bush administration of trying to topple his government.
He also said
Venezuela
will remain a steady supplier of oil as long as there are no
US
‘aggressions.’"

IRAN

Trend:Most of the news involving
Iran
is covered in sections above.The
trend is continued demonization of
Iran
, over its nuclear development, by the
US
, despite no evidence that
Iran
is doing anything illegal in this regard.

“
Iraq
's defence minister, on a landmark visit to
Iran
, called for reconciliation between the two neighbours and former arch-foes
and pledged not to allow Iraqi soil to be used for attacks against the
Islamic republic…Dulaimi
pledged that the two sides would begin military and anti-terrorist cooperation,
but nevertheless asserted it was too soon for US and other foriegn troops
to pull out of his country…The
Iraqi minister pledged that the
United States
could not oppose the cooperation between the two countries: ‘We
are going to cooperate and no one can stop this cooperation’…‘Our Iranian brothers have promised us a billion dollar
aid as a loan,’ he added.”

RUSSIA

Trend: Russia
seems to want emulate the
US
in terms of “fighting terror” – to take advantage
of an unseen and largely unidentifiable enemy as an excuse to project
power.Of course,
Russia
has identified different enemies as “the terrorists.”There is also mounting evidence that
Russia
, as well as the EU and
China
are concerned about limiting or stopping the “gone wild” foreign
policy of the
US
.

“President
Vladimir Putin has ordered the Russian interior ministry to conduct
preventive strikes against terrorists.”The
U.S.
has set the precedent for leaders everywhere to capitalize on this
type of
“kill now, ask questions later, if at all” policy that has become “the
way the world works.”

“The
US and
Britain
are putting the multinational corporations that created poverty in charge
of its relief…”Readers
might not understand that corporations pay the leaders of developing
countries to gain access to natural resources, rightfully the wealth
of the local people.The
corporations take and sell the resources in return for hiring a few locals.The payoffs never seem to mange not to trickle down to the
citizens.The G8 is saying, “business
as usual,” lending credence to the notion that world leaders serve
wealthy corporations first, and are effectively controlled by them.“Few would deny that
one of the things
Africa
needs is investment. But investment by many of our multinationals
has not enriched its people but impoverished them. The history of corporate involvement in
Africa
is one of forced labour, evictions, murder, wars, the under-costing
of resources, tax evasion and collusion with dictators. Nothing
in either the Investment Climate Facility or the Growth and Opportunity
Act imposes mandatory constraints on corporations.”

Trend:There is increasing polarization of groups highly
devoted to particular religious teachings.There is also increasing hypocrisy evident within extremist
factions of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish groups.This polarization and extremism seems to be driving members
of these various groups to deeds, in the name of religion, that are
anything but holy.

“
America
's largest church celebrated its move into the former arena for the Houston
Rockets with a capacity crowd of 16,000, an upbeat sermon from its televangelist
pastor and a spirited welcome from the governor of
Texas
.”

“Inside
America
’s
MostPowerfulMegachurch
…She called it ‘spiritual restoration.’
Anyone can do it, she promised, ‘even a gay activist.’ Linda
had seen with her own eyes the sex demons that make homosexuals rebel
against God, and she said they are gruesome; but she did not name them,
for she would not ‘give demons glory.’”

In
an age where the powerful seek, as they always have, to control information
and its flow, the internet is a mixed blessing.It
allows for identification and tracking of people, but allows for information
to be disseminated outside of the corporate mainstream system.The current internet model allows
for too much freedom to suit our leaders.It
may be prudent to expect that they’ll try to do something about
that, openly or covertly.

“The
U.S.
government will indefinitely retain oversight of the main computers that
control traffic on the Internet, ignoring calls by some countries to
turn the function over to an international body…”

“USC learned of the breach June 20 when it was tipped off by a
journalist, Harrington said. It has since shut down the Web
site and has notified people whose names and Social Security numbers
were in the database of the security breach.”

“A
bill before
Canada
's Parliament could make it illegal for search engines to cache Web pages,
critics say, opening the door to unwarranted lawsuits and potentially
hindering public access to information.”

“The days are now numbered for surfing an uncensored, open-access
Internet, using your favorite search engine to search a bottomless
cyber-sea of information in the grandest democratic forum ever conceived
by humankind. Instead you can look forward to Googling about on a
walled-off, carefully selected corpus of government propaganda and
sanitized information
"safe" for public consumption…Federal
government--from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to the White House--and
corporate mainstream media have worked cooperatively to quietly block open
access to cyberspace…Broadband and DSL are therefore on their
way to becoming extensions of corporate mainstream media. In fact, the companies
that have taken control of the Internet are themselves part of an intricate
web of corporate media ownership.”

“Home
Secretary Charles Clarke says firms
across
Europe
should be ordered to retain phone and e-mail records to help track
down terrorists…‘"We
should guarantee the full traceability of the movements of terrorists’”Or anyone, for
that matter?“…proposing
that records of all private telephone calls, text messages and e-mails
be retained by telecommunications firms so they can be passed on to
the police and security services if necessary.”

ISTANBUL
,
Turkey
-- First one sheep jumped to its death. Then stunned Turkish shepherds,
who had left the herd to graze while they had breakfast, watched as
nearly 1,500 others followed, each leaping off the same cliff, Turkish
media reported.”What can we
learn about following the herd?